by David Ashton
But he had his own thoughts on that.
The inspector glowered up at Queen Victoria as if she were personally responsible for all this, and then swept out of Roach’s office to march through the main body of the station, paying no heed to the respectful silence greeting his entrance. He then disappeared into the cold room.
Mary Dougan was still dead.
Her face did not seem so bonny now.
She was a good-natured soul and, as far as he knew, had never wittingly done a single person harm.
See where it gets you.
Chapter 23
For the life of me, I could not understand why a woman should not have as much right to enter a canoe as a man.
Herman Melville, Typee
Jean Brash leant back and let an envious wind blow through her hair so that it flew like a standard trailing behind as the coach clattered noisily in the Sabbath silence.
They had gone hell for leather through Leith Links, found their way to Bonnington Road, and then hammered along Henderson Row, as she revelled in the freedom a wee blink of sun could grant a woman in sore need.
Angus had been instructed to haul back the top of the carriage, give the cuddies a good skelp, and off they went.
‘Whee-hee!’ shouted the owner of the Just Land in a most unladylike fashion, causing her companion Hannah Semple to shake her head in a nae good will come of this manner, a phrase she often thought might look well on her tombstone.
In contrast to Jean’s vivid lavender dress ensconced inside a cream coat, Hannah was dressed in dowdy hues, with a hat shaped not unlike a dropped scone, that she clung onto grimly as the wind pegged wickedly at her body. On the Links, Jean’s own hat, which took after a French cake, near whipped off her head and she had taken advantage to pull out the pins, loose it from her head and give best to nature.
In truth she knew not why her spirits were so high – perhaps it was the success of repelling boarders at the bawdy-hoose – those cries of pain echoed yet in her joyful ears – or just the fact that the sun had managed to fight its way through the clouds to bring a moment of luminosity to the browbeaten stone of the city, but she felt a rush of elation not even the thought of McLevy’s boiled dumpling of a face could spoil.
Even Angus sneakily extracted from his pocket one of the sugar lumps he kept for the horses and crunched it in his teeth with what passed for Aberdonian abandon.
They had swung up sharp left from Henderson Row, heading for Queen Street, where Jean planned to veer to the right and confront the Castle.
She never failed to thrill at the mass of rock that looked as if it had been deposited there by a giant hand, and nursed a secret childlike fear that one night it would take off like a rocket firework and speed off into darkness, never to be seen again.
But not today!
‘Faster, Angus! Pit some beef intae it,’ she called loudly, as Hannah winced.
Sometimes Jean went back to the good old days, which as far as Hannah was concerned were the bad old days where murder and mayhem broke out before your eyes if not under your very feet. That stramash wi’ the Scarlet Runners had got the mistress’s blood boiling – God knows where it would all end up, but the woman was steamin’ wi’ tomfoolery.
It didnae help that she had no-one in her bed at this minute. Her last lover, a handsome and eminent surgeon, had been in the habit of describing in grisly detail the workings of his latest operations upon the gall bladder. This, as Jean told Hannah, may have set the man’s corpuscles moving, but did very little for hers.
It had been a clean cut.
He might return to his wife and gall bladders.
The coach suddenly jolted to a halt, as Angus pulled hard on the reins. They had encountered a crowd of folk newly out of St Stephen’s Church; not an uncovered head to be seen, even amongst the weans. The scene was like something out of a moral tract, as the congregation gazed at Jean and she looked back at them.
A shaft of bright sun played lasciviously with the tousled locks of her red hair, her white skin shone like a beacon of temptation, and the green eyes sparkled with a fire that few loins in that gathering had ever experienced.
As the shut faces of the women froze to a rigid righteousness and some of their husbands, who may have known Jean’s bill of fare a little more closely than they might concede, shuffled behind to avoid scrutiny, the imp of mischief possessed her and she called out a name to a face in the crowd, known from previous exploits.
‘Lieutenant Roach – isn’t it a beautiful day?’
A hiss escaped the lips of Jonas Gibbons. Harlot!
Roach’s face at first went puce then drained to a putty white. He seemed to be the object of all eyes, especially the uxorial pair on his immediate left.
Jonas Gibbons’s strong hand gripped Roach’s upper arm as if to restrain him from leaping into the carriage and driving off in answer to Jean’s daemonic sexual invitation.
For indeed the woman was the embodiment of the siren song, and the minister’s face registered anger and disgust that she should thus profane the Sabbath Day.
And as for Roach?
What could he say?
You must excuse me but I have had professional dealings with this woman, not at all of a lecherous nature, more to do with murderous activities, and mainly through the offices of my inspector James McLevy who is sadly not on hand at this moment otherwise I could point him out and you might all gawk in his direction.
I can also honestly say that I have never set foot in the Just Land! I much prefer the opera in the company of my good wife. Opera being such a cleansing experience.
No. It would sound like a feeble justification, and one look at the minister’s countenance made him think that the Mercy of God would stretch only so far.
Better to say nothing, lower his head in a way that might be interpreted by Jean as acknowledgement and others as a pious dismissal, and hope that either the woman quit the scene or the ground might open up and swallow him.
For a moment Jean registered the secret hatred of the gathering, but then her laughter rang out again.
She boldly sought out the hard, unforgiving eyes of Jonas Gibbons and smiled.
Then, almost comically, a face peeped out from behind the obdurate man of God. A sandy-haired youth, mouth slightly open, eyes wide.
Jean winked at him and the young man turned bright red and disappeared.
‘For Goad’s sake, Mistress Brash,’ Hannah said urgently. ‘Can we get tae hell out of here before they burn ye at the stake!’
Jean sat back demurely, ran a hand through her hair, and signalled Angus to drive on past the worshippers.
‘See Hannah,’ she murmured as the horses jangled up South Charlotte Street, steam rising from their flanks in the sunlight. ’All gone. Jist like a bad dream.’
Indeed the way was clear and the grim audience far behind; don’t look back, eyes straight ahead.
Jean had always felt sorry for Orpheus. Poor man, doing his best but the Gods are a sleekit bunch.
‘Whit’s fur ye will no’ go by ye!’ she added.
This being one of Hannah’s own sayings, the old woman had to give best to this remark, but she had noted a moment of pain on Jean’s face before the defiance appeared.
They were outsiders.
Their profession more honest than the dirty tricks of commerce and the lying hypocrisy of the unco guid.
The Law, the Church, and the Body Politic – three snakes slithering round each other as they climbed the greasy pole.
No – they were more honest than that slime.
But they would never be accepted.
‘Angus – stop!’
Jean’s cry jolted them once more to a sudden halt.
‘Sorra mend ye!’ Hannah expostulated. ‘Are we never getting’ up this brae?’
But what Jean had noticed was a passenger in another carriage that had just turned off Queen Street. The gentleman in the hansom cab had also shouted his driver to a stop.
&n
bsp; Angus carefully backed the coach so that when the fellow leaned out, he and Jean were face to face.
He took a deep drag of a slim cigarette and coughed elegantly behind an upraised hand.
‘Jean Brash – as I live and breathe. Near twenty years and still as beautiful.’
‘Robert Louis,’ Jean smiled. ‘I wish I could say the same for you.’
Stevenson laughed.
‘How so that you recognised me then?’
‘That lang neb. And shifty outlook. Doesnae alter.’
Another burst of laughter, joined this time by Jean.
Hannah observed them both with narrowed eyes. Were they once lovers? She doubted that – Henry Preger had his brand on the young Jean until McLevy beat the hell out of him and arsenic finished off the job.
Jean reached out a hand to lay upon the sleeve of the man’s velvet jacket, just above the immaculate white cuffs held in place by diamond studs. His tie hung loose and the whole appearance was of someone more at home on a Mississippi river-boat.
‘Ye should have been a gambler, Robert.’
‘I am.’
Implicit in the statement was that Stevenson wagered on life itself rather than money, and Jean bowed her head to the point before she gave a more formal response.
‘I was sorry to hear about your father.’
‘Yes. It has been a sad time. But he will shortly be . . . in more welcoming surroundings.’
A sly, humorous droop to the eye and she could not restrain an answering smile.
‘Have you enjoyed your visit so far?’
‘It has been . . . eventful.’
‘Will you stay longer?’
‘No.’ He coughed once more. ‘Otherwise I shall finish this sojourn in the company of my ancestors.’
The horses were becoming fidgety and Hannah was obviously in sympathy. Jean smiled once more.
‘Come see me afore ye go. The Just Land. A’body knows it. For one reason or another.’
He bowed his head and she let out a call, signalling Angus to gee up the horses, then shouted back as the carriage moved off.
‘In the afternoon. I aye take coffee in the afternoon!’
‘I’ll bear that in mind!’
With his answering cry the carriage was gone and his last view was of Hannah’s dour face glowering, as if to threaten arsenic of her own should he take up the offer.
Stevenson grinned to himself, then nodded to his driver to carry on down the hill, as the toiling faithful, like a stream of black ants, made their way up each side of the road.
No doubt Fanny would be in a blinding post-pious bate, being more bohemian by nature than even he might aspire to, but a cleverly pitched version of his ordeal at Leith Station, where her ailing husband had found himself at the mercy of a menacing Edgar Allen Poe fanatic, would move her to pity or at least curiosity.
So long as she had not witnessed a conversation on the brae between a beautiful red-haired bawdy-hoose keeper and himself. An innocent conversation, but the pure at heart can often be lumped in with baser elements.
Besides and to be truthful, with all her irretrievable faults, he put Fanny Osbourne above all women.
Not on a pedestal, however.
The cab turned into Heriot Row and he could see her on the road ahead hanging onto Lloyd’s arm, with Margaret, his mother, on the other side.
It would make a man of the lad.
Meanwhile on Queen Street, that bawdy-hoose keeper dangled one arm out of the carriage and enjoyed the encounter of cool air with her bare skin, as the wind sneaked up her sleeve.
She smiled to herself and met Hannah’s wary glance with an artless countenance.
‘He’s a happily married man,’ she remarked.
‘That’s whit they a’ say,’ was the sardonic response as they turned the corner to confront the immensity of the Castle.
Surely it put human machinations into some kind of proportion?
But on the other hand had the massive edifice seen into the future it might have warned that even a sunny encounter in the street might bring about a death in the family.
Chapter 24
Give me, kind heaven, a private station,
A mind serene for contemplation.
John Gay, Fables
Sim Carnegie tried not to let the unwholesome glee he felt inside show upon his face. Things, other than the sad death of his mother, of course, had never before gone so well in his life.
He had something up the sleeve that was going to cause panic and perturbation plus supply sufficient headlines to make a bonfire.
Who knew? Perhaps one of the bigger newspapers would pick him up; only what he deserved.
Furthermore it was not long now before he would sit in Herbert Lawson the lawyer’s office and once again keep the warm glow of pleasure to himself, as he inherited the fruits of his mother’s frugality.
She had been left a decent amount when his father, an antiquarian book-keeper, had collapsed and died while poring over a large tome of Pilgrim’s Progress.
Giant Despair of Doubting Castle.
The shop plus contents were sold and Sim had never got a sniff, but he played the part of the attentive son, calling every Wednesday evening, tholing Agnes’s disapproval of his dubious profession and lack of religious observation.
She would unlock the chest where she kept all her ‘treasures’, pull out some holy tract and declaim aloud in the hope that it might convert the ungodly.
Sadly, it had not worked. But he bore it. And nodded. Even went to church a few times. But his hypocrisy and greed could only endure so far.
And after her reading, Sim would repair to the tavern, find a couple of murky whores and rut it out of his system.
Now all these sacrifices would be proved worthwhile.
She never spent a penny and he would be a rich man with money and headlines to burn.
His only concern had been if she had changed her will for any reason; occasionally his dear mother would mutter darkly about to those that hath, it shall be given.
But as soon as he had heard of the death, Sim had slipped into her lodgings using a copy he had waxed and made from her own door key, then searched the place from top to bottom.
Nothing found. Safe as houses. And the only will at the lawyer’s was the original.
All this and the sight of Lieutenant Roach’s face as he read the front page of the Leith Herald.
‘I thought it only fair to bring you a copy of the Monday edition. I am proud of what I have produced and must warn you in all decency that there is more to come.’
Having delivered this fastidious rebuke, Sim leant back in his chair and watched the effects of the written word.
Since Roach still said nothing, Carnegie felt it incumbent upon him to quote from memory.
‘The dead body of my dear mother will no doubt join a list of unsolved crimes that litter the history of our far from gallant and supremely inefficient police force.’
The lieutenant imagined Chief Constable Sandy Robb casting his bloodshot, bulging eyes over this sorry farrago, and it was not a pretty thought.
His attention was caught by another part of the article, which was more fuel to the flame.
It is more than rumoured that a white favour was found upon the poor corpse. That very night, the Murder Night! the White Devils faction of these warring students who have made our streets such a cauldron of unprincipled violence had a pitched battle with their fierce rivals the Scarlet Runners.
Was this decent soul caught in the middle? Was the favour left as a mark of contempt upon her lacerated body? The leader of the White Devils is known to the police – after another fracas in the dark, he was taken into custody but released almost immediately. Why is he not arrested and put under the hammer like a common criminal until the truth emerges? Is it because he is a different class with lawyers to hand? An educated hooligan?
Where is my mother’s murderer?
Why is he running free?
The
lieutenant blinked tiredly, however his mind was racing – so Carnegie knew that Daniel Drummond had been hauled in and let go.
Again the man seemed to have information about the inner workings of the station.
Of course there were many constables involved and it was possible careless or boastful talk might have gone the rounds but – it was more likely an informer.
And that was a hellish prospect.
Who was it?
‘Well?’
At his opponent’s impatient interjection, Roach pushed the paper aside with one finger as if fearing contamination.
‘You ask a great many questions, Mister Carnegie,’ he muttered.
‘And I want them answered.’
‘They will be. In good time.’
Sim had stood since he entered the office, and to look down on Roach was no great hardship.
‘Just how is the investigation?’
‘It is . . . proceeding,’ replied Roach warily, glad of the small mercy that the man had so far not caught whiff of the second murder – but that would only be a matter of time.
Again Carnegie fought against the outburst of malicious glee; better to let it drip into his system drop by drop as he watched events unfold.
‘I have a great deal of ammunition,’ he contented himself with saying. ‘Solve this soon, lieutenant, or you will feel the impact.’
‘Impact?’
‘There is more to come. You have been warned.’
Roach had suddenly had enough; he had toiled most of Sunday and the evening was spent listening to his wife’s bridge group in the adjoining room, where few cards were played and most of the talk was of Jean Brash’s Sabbath insolence.
His wife, though not ignoring him entirely, had not been rushing to fetch pipe and slippers. A cold supper. Ham and pickles. He detested pickles.
‘I observe you to be still standing, Mister Carnegie,’ Roach said frigidly. ‘Perhaps you might oblige me by turning on your heel and making use of the door.’
Sim opened his mouth to make retort, but Roach snarled like a cross-grained reptile.
‘I said the door!’